Des Moines County's new website is online

Tanner Cole

Sunday

Feb 11, 2018 at 12:01 AM

When Des Moines County bought a new website design in 2012, it came with a redesign a few years down the line.

That redesign went live Thursday. The county's website dmcounty.com is reorganized with a new logo and a navigation system IT Director Gina Erickson hopes will solve some of the difficulties visitors have when searching for specific information.

"We really wanted the website to let people know who and what Des Moines County is, and to make things easier to find on the website," Erickson said.

Prior to its previous site, the county had an in-house webmaster running a website. The job was outsourced to a company called CivicPlus, which also manages Burlington's website. The website cost $35,060 with annual maintenance costs of $5,891.

The new site also features the new Des Moines County logo unveiled in July. CivicPlus designed the logo and a branding package for $7,000.

The new look's been in the works for about a year. A county committee of about 20 people picked out everything.

The last website was designed to cram as much into one computer screen as possible, according to Erickson. Things are spaced out more this time around, in the hope the site's visitors will be more comfortable scrolling down the page now that it's 2018.

The site also now is optimized for viewing on a mobile phone.

Many visitors to the previous website were hunting for courts information and unable to find it. The new site has a big courts tab in a prominent menu bar.

The website also makes use of more visuals than the previous site.

"We hope everything is easier to find in this new system," Erickson said.